Irvine Porter,
would take Jim with him when he went quail hunting. At first, Jim was tasked
with feeding and working the bird dogs. He remembered how happy he was when he
"graduated" from working the dogs to being able to shoot.

Irvine
Porter was a nationally recognized target shooter who visited ranges around
Birmingham on the weekends, and young Jim Porter quickly became comfortable
around the firearms and the shooting ranges.

"People ask
me if I'm as good a shot as my dad," he said. "I say no, but I'm the best
target puller in the world."

From 1959 to
1961, Irvine Porter served as the president of the National Rifle Association.

In May, Jim
Porter, a 64-year-old Birmingham attorney and lifelong supporter of the NRA,
followed in his father's footsteps as the organization's new president. But the
organization today is far different than when Irvine Porter was president.

A different debate

To Jim
Porter, the NRA serves a lot of purposes. It teaches people -- almost a million
people a year, he said -- how to safely handle firearms. It also brings
together more than five million members with shared interests that include
hunting, conservation and personal safety.

But today
the NRA doesn't make headlines because it teaches people to always treat a
firearm as if it's loaded. For the past 45 years, it's been prominent for
political activity on behalf of gun owners.

"I view the
NRA as the oldest and largest civil rights organization in this country,"
Porter said. "That's basically what we are is a civil rights organization."

When his
father was in charge, the NRA wasn't fighting political battles. It wasn't
until 45 years ago, when President Lyndon Johnson pushed for and signed the Gun
Control Act and the Safe Streets Act of 1968, that the NRA began to fight for
the Second Amendment.

Today, the
debate over gun rights is more intense than it has been in years. Mass
shootings in Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn., caused many to ask questions
about gun laws in the United States: Who should be able to buy firearms? Should
assault-style firearms be legal?

In April, a
bill that would have required stricter background checks for firearm purchases
and banned assault-style weapons failed
in the U.S. Senate, in part because of the NRA's opposition to it, the
bill's sponsor, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., said.

It was only
a few weeks after that vote when Porter entered the picture, taking the reins
from former President David Keene at the NRA's annual convention in Houston. In
his speech there, he said the debate over gun rights was a "culture war."

"Mr.
Obama said he wasn't going after our guns," he said. "As soon as the Connecticut
thing happened, he came after our guns."

A controversial image

Porter's
ascension at the NRA during a time of heated debate over gun control drew
national attention to him and his comments on gun rights and the Obama
administration. At a
speech to the Wallkill Rod and Gun Club in New York, Porter referred to "fake
president" Obama, whose administration was "anti-gun, anti-freedom and
anti-Second Amendment."

The New
York Daily News said Porter "sounds even crazier than the group's gun-nut
mouthpiece Wayne LaPierre," the NRA's executive vice president. Josh Horwitz, the
executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, told
the Associated Press after Porter's speech at the NRA's convention that, "with
Jim Porter, they've gone full crazy."

NRA attendee, John Joseph of Sebastian, Fla., waits in line outside the George R. Brown Convention Center before the opening of the National Rifle Association's 142 Annual Meetings and Exhibits at the George R. Brown Convention Center Thursday, May 2, 2013, in Houston. (AP Photo/Houston Chronicle, Johnny Hanson)

Porter said that
portrayal of the NRA is nothing new. He said it dates back to those original
gun control fights in '68, when he said the term "gun lobby" first came into
use.

"The
rhetoric and the demonization of my organization is no different than it was
back then and it has been in the last 45 years," he said. "I would say that the
membership of the NRA is made up of just wonderful, good solid American
citizens."

Porter said
the way to cut down on violent crime was not to take guns away from law-abiding
people.

"I've never
understood the concept of further impeding law-abiding citizens' constitutional
rights when it has no effect on crime," he said.

Cities such as
New York, Chicago and Washington D.C., where gun laws are stricter, have higher
rates of crime and violent crime, he said. He also said the NRA supported part
of the 1968 law that was designed to keep guns out of the hands of felons and
those determined by courts to be mentally incompetent.

"The
quickest and best way to deal with crime, particularly violent crime," he said,
"is to enforce the laws against the criminals."

More than politics

But there's
more to Porter than rhetoric about freedom and the Second Amendment, and there's
more to the NRA than lobbying on Capitol Hill.

Porter takes
a keen interest in conservation issues, noting that hunting is a very important
component of what the NRA does. He was active in the reauthorization of Alabama's
Forever Wild Land Trust, and said Alabama is a well-kept secret when it comes
to its variety of wildlife and natural beauty.

"We just
have so much to offer in the way of that diverse, beautiful land that we have
in this state," he said.

At the NRA,
political operations are still only a small part of the group's overall
activity, Porter said. They just happen to be the most publicized.

"Over 80
percent of our budget is for what we call general operations, our education and
training," he said. "I think people are also unaware again that the lion's
share of what we do is education and training, and we've been doing that for
142 years now."

And Porter
said there are a lot of reasons beyond safety for responsible gun ownership,
that it "sets forth a number of very good life lessons, chief among them is
individual responsibility and respect for others."